Lyell: Colorado State making big strides in all of its sports programs

Jan. 28, 2014

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The Bold New Era is more than just a marketing slogan for the CSU athletic department.

A little more than two years since the slogan first appeared on the day athletic director Jack Graham introduced Jim McElwain as his new football coach, the slogan has been updated to simply “Be Bold.’’ But the goals haven’t changed, and results of the department’s new commitment to success are beginning to show.

The Rams went 8-6 in football, qualified for a bowl game for the first time since 2008 and gained national attention with their remarkable comeback from 15 points down in the final minutes to beat Washington State 48-45.

The men’s basketball team made a second consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament last year under first-year coach Larry Eustachy and is playing better this year than anybody really could have hoped after losing five starters off last year’s squad. The Rams are 12-8 overall and 3-4 in the Mountain West heading into a game Wednesday night at Nevada. More impressive, though, is that they’ve been in position to win all but one of the game’s they’ve lost until the final minute or two. The only game they’ve lost by more than 10 points was an early season contest against then-No. 15 Gonzaga in Spokane, Wash.

And the CSU women’s basketball team, in coach Ryun Williams’ second season, is off to its best start since 2001-02 and leading the MW at 14-4 overall and 6-1 in league play entering a home game Wednesday night against Nevada.

Even the volleyball team, which has been among the nation’s best for nearly two decades, set a school record this season with a 27-0 start. The Rams finished 28-2 after advancing to the NCAA tournament for the 19th consecutive season and winning the MW title for the fifth year in a row.

The school started a new women’s soccer program this fall, and the men’s cross country team was ranked as high as No. 15 in the nation.

There’s no telling what role success in one sport has in producing success in others, but it’s clear there’s a new way of doing things in Colorado State University’s athletic department and a higher expectation of success.

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“It’s really exciting, the whole environment in the athletic department,” women’s basketball player Caitlin Duffy said Monday. “There are other teams that have been really successful, and they have really been supportive of us.”

It’s not easy, Graham admits, to meet the demands that CSU is placing on its athletes. To “do it all,’’ as he regularly reminds them. He expects each of them to be people of good character, succeed academically and graduating with a degree, and win. Anything less, he said, is unacceptable.

Proof that it’s making a difference came last spring, when each of the school’s roughly 400 student-athletes met the eligibility requirements set forth by the university and NCAA, a 100 percent success rate that rarely is reached by a Division I school.

Much of what Graham has accomplished has been lost in the controversy surrounding his push for an on-campus stadium. But he’s shown he cares about far more than the football program, and coaches and athletes in other sports regularly say so.

There’s still a lot of work ahead to get to where the school is trying to go, competing for conference titles and success on a national level in every sport they play. But two years in, there clearly are signs the Rams are moving in the right direction.

Sports reporter Kelly Lyell can be reached by email at KellyLyell@coloradoan.com. Follow him at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news and listen to him talk about CSU sports at 11:35 a.m. each Thursday on KFKA radio (AM 1310).